


If Love Would Have Saved Her (she would have lived forever)

by Nazezdha321



Series: All’s Fair in Love and War [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Feels, Gonna live and die on this hill, I’m still upset she’s dead okay, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, THIS IS MY HOME NOW, angst & feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:34:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23290087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nazezdha321/pseuds/Nazezdha321
Summary: Natasha Romanoff died to save the world. To save worlds. To save trillions of people (probably more, but I don’t think they want to do an intergalactic census).Natasha Romanoff lived so that she could be worthy of living, to redeem herself from all of the bad things she’d done.This is what she meant to her team.
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Natasha Romanov & Avengers Team, Natasha Romanov & Thor, Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov
Series: All’s Fair in Love and War [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678204
Comments: 15
Kudos: 42





	If Love Would Have Saved Her (she would have lived forever)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sanctuaria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanctuaria/gifts).



> This is my counterattack for the lovely Sanctuaria. 
> 
> How much can I torture Natasha? Well, I can’t. 
> 
> How much can torture everybody with Natasha?
> 
> ...

**Tony** **Stark**

  
When Tony Stark first met Natasha Romanoff, he met her as Natalie Rushman. She was witty, sexy, the kind of woman that he probably had a weakness for (that he _definitely_ had a weakness for). And then she turned out to be a secret agent, ex-KGB spy/assassin now working for SHIELD. Did it offend him that Nick Fury had deliberately placed her because he knew how Tony would react? Not really. 

(But Tony was slightly more careful around sexy assassins from then on.) 

Maybe he finally learned how to trust people because of her, and he did end up trusting her. After New York, she seemed less guarded. After Ultron, probably more guarded. Progress, and then steps backward. That was the way she seemed to operate; opening herself up little by little only to hide again, to hope it wasn’t a mistake. 

(He wondered why she did that for a long time, until SHIELD fell and her secrets seemed to drown her.) 

It wasn’t until they heard about the Sokovia Accords that he finally figured her out. She was insistent they stay together. Then the Berlin airport fight happened, and then she turned on them, on him, and saved Steve and Barnes. _Double_ _agent_ , his mind seemed to whisper after that, _betrayer_ , _liar_ , _traitor_. _You_ _can’t_ _trust_ _her_.

“Rhodey’s going to be the best-case scenario,” Natasha had warned him. He knew that. But he was angry at her, angry at her for betraying them, angry at her because maybe she’d been playing Steve’s side all along, angry because one of his best friends was paralyzed, so he lashed out.

(He knew that wasn’t fair.)

He heard nothing from her for two years, until Thanos. He saw security footage when they got him back to Earth, footage of her coming in to save Wanda and Vision. Nat was - no, they _all_ were more jaded, tired of fighting and running.

(It didn’t hit him then, but maybe Nat hadn’t been fighting with Team Cap the whole time.)

He saw her when Carol brought him and Nebula back to Earth, saw how devastated she was. Here he was, bitterly shaping images of them all in his mind as cold, cruel people who were hiding the man who murdered his parents, and there she was, tears in her eyes, clutching the only hope they had left - that they could track down Thanos somehow, that they could bring everyone back somehow.

(Maybe he didn’t give her enough credit for that.)

After their failed attempt to get the stones, he left the Compound and saw nothing of Natasha Romanoff or the Avengers for five long years, in which he married Pepper and had Morgan. He heard that she was running the Avengers.

(He didn’t consider that she wasn’t just doing it because no one else would.)

Then she showed up one day, and she saw Morgan and Tony, and she jutted out her chin. He knew what she was trying to convey in that small motion. _I’m_ _sorry_ , for sure. But something else too. It’s why he copied her movement, because he was never going to apologize for Berlin, but he was apologizing for being an ass about her trying to keep everyone together. He was going to listen to whatever she had to say, before it was too late.

(She was happy for him, he realized after she died, she was happy even though he had what she never would.)

Tony smiled slightly when she told them that she’d see them in a minute, but the minutes turned to hours, and Rhodey _was_ the best case scenario, because Natasha Romanoff didn’t come home.

(Neither did he.)

**Steve** **Rogers**

  
When Steve Rogers first met Natasha Romanoff, they were on what appeared to be a boat, but, as he would find out, was in fact a helicarrier. She seemed confident, sure of herself. It didn’t faze her like it did so many others that he was Captain America. That surprised him. They showed him videos of her and Clint, fighting side-by-side. It seemed like she could take care of herself, even amongst the monsters and magic.

(He didn’t know then how much she would end up taking care of them.)

During the Battle of New York, the way she’d fought just like the rest of them, even managing to close the portal by ‘catching a ride’ up to Stark Tower… it shocked him, probably because the only woman he’d ever known like that was Peggy Carter.

(He wouldn’t find out until later that Peggy had founded SHIELD, the program that ended up saving Natasha. It seemed fitting to him.)

When they found out HYDRA was SHIELD and SHIELD was HYDRA, Steve saw a side of Nat he rarely did, the side that feared everything she’d become, everything she thought she knew was a lie. 

(He didn’t know that it wasn’t the first time.)

He didn’t see it firsthand, but Maria Hill told him after, how Natasha dumped every secret SHIELD had - every secret she had - on the Internet, effectively exposing her and everything she’d ever done. What she said at her hearing on Capitol Hill stunned him. “But we’re also the ones most qualified to defend it.”

(It stunned him because she’d stuck up for the team, he discovered. Steve didn’t realize it then, but they weren’t really a team until after SHIELD fell. The Avengers Initiative was a SHIELD initiative. But them choosing to stay together after SHIELD fell - that was what solidified them.)

What really surprised him, though, was when they went to Clint’s farmhouse. The way the little girl, Lila, had asked for ‘Auntie Nat’ as if Natasha was the best person in the world, and it stuck with him the way Natasha had hugged Lila when she so rarely showed that kind of affection.

(It didn’t occur to him then that there was a reason for that.)

Then Sokovia fell from the sky, and it wasn’t until she told Steve that she wasn’t saying they should leave that he really saw her for who she was. The Nat who never took her coffee with sugar, who was the queen of Monopoly and just about every other board game that required strategy, who didn’t leave behind a city full of people because she knew it wasn’t right. That was Natasha. Not Black Widow, not super spy, simply human.

(It made Steve glad that out of all the superheroes and geniuses and gods, at least one of them hadn’t lost their humanity.)

Once the Sokovia Accords were ratified, he saw what she had been trying to prevent. He and Bucky went on the run, and her words echoed in his ears. “You’ll only make this worse, for all of us.” Steve knew she hadn’t meant it like that, but it was what his brain chose to hear.

(He wondered if he had.)

He remembered her asking him if he trusted her to save his life back in Sam’s house. He told her that he did. And then she did save his life, his and Bucky’s, in Berlin. He heard that she went on the run shortly after, but he didn’t see her until she showed up one day and scared them out of their wits. Steve and Sam had run into the apartment to grab guns, only to remember how familiar that voice was and creep around the corner. “You remember the first rule of running away?” She’d asked, bleeding out in their doorway. “Don’t run, walk.”

(They had to stitch up four massive cuts, and she had a fair amount of bruises and two fractures. Steve saw tears in her eyes, but he knew better than to ask about them, because he knew they weren’t from the alcohol and the needle.)

They got Wanda’s distress call a few minutes after the news outlets reported a spaceship in New York and Tony Stark missing. After Thanos, he glanced at her standing next to him over Vision’s gray body. She was angry, he realized, but she was also sad. Steve didn’t know why.

(He would tell her later that it was a nightmare. She would reply that she’d had better nightmares. He never knew what the worse ones were about.)

Then they got their one last shot, their last chance to bring everyone back. Steve looked around at them, the last of the Avengers. What remained of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Together they stood, to save the world again.

(It was the last time she would.)

**Bruce** **Banner**

  
When Bruce Banner first met Natasha Romanoff, she got a little girl to lure him into a trap. He asked if they started that young. “I did,” She replied, shrugging. Bruce asked, “Who are you?”

(He didn’t know that question was what Natasha had spent her whole life trying to answer.)

Then she told him she needed him to come in. “How did SHIELD find me?” She smiled in a sort of bittersweet way, as if she knew exactly what it felt like to ask that question. Then he got mad, just for a minute, and Natasha drew a gun and aimed at his head. She didn’t scream and run like other agents might have, and when she gave the stand down order, he asked somewhat ironically, “Just you and me?”

(He wouldn’t find out until later that Nat was never alone. That she carried the ghosts of her past with her.)

There was something between them, just for a second, or maybe there wasn’t, but no one would ever know, because then he went and made an AI that wanted to end the human race. Some ideas are better left as pipe dreams.

(Maybe he didn’t know that until he tried to make one a reality.)

And then there was nothing for two years. They told him the Avengers broke up, and apparently aliens showing up on Earth and Tony Stark going to space was becoming a regular occurrence, because that’s exactly what happened. He didn't know what to do, so he called Steve with the flip phone that Tony had in his pocket.

“I didn’t know there was Wi-Fi in space, which is where they’re saying you are, by the way,” was what Steve said when he picked up.

“It’s not Tony, he actually is in space and I doubt there’s Wi-Fi there. I’m here, though. Thanos is coming,” Bruce said quickly.

“Hang on - Bruce?”

“Yeah, I’m on Earth now. Apparently it’s been two years. I was stuck on a - you know what, it’s a long story. Tony and this kid and the wizard, they all just went up in the donut spaceship with the aliens, like… just now. And another alien is coming to wipe out half of all life, except he might actually be able to do it,” Bruce explained.

“Bruce, go to the Compound. We’ll meet you there, and then you explain this,” Steve decided.

Bruce didn’t actually know who ‘we’ was, because he was still unsure on who was ‘Team Captain America’ and ‘Team Iron Man,’ but he went to the Compound anyway. Rhodey looked a little surprised to see him, but shrugged it off, motioning for him to stay out of Thunderbolt Ross’ view.

(Bruce didn’t know then, but Rhodey had been paralyzed in this airport fight. He hadn’t realized just how deep this rivalry ran, that they had _actually_ tried to kill one another.)

Steve and Natasha walked in, Steve with a beard and Natasha with blonde hair, both of which shocked Bruce. He hadn’t remembered how long it had been since he’d seen them. But Nat’s look of astonishment when he crept out of the shadows said enough.

(They’d all changed. Maybe he hadn’t recognized yet just how much she had.)

They went to Wakanda, where he got pranked into bowing to T’Challa and making himself look like an idiot, which actually made him feel better. Maybe after Thanos, things would finally get back to normal.

(He didn’t realize that life as they knew it was over.)

What ended up happening after Thanos, was a second mission to beat Thanos, which bore no fruit. Bruce left a little while after that. He wasn’t useful to them anymore, and he had to move on. He saw reports that Nat was running the Avengers, which made him smile sadly, because he knew she couldn’t move on.

(No matter how many times she tried.)

When she showed up with Scott and Steve and gave him another chance to be a hero, he took it. Even if he had moved on, half the universe still deserved that opportunity. He couldn’t abandon them, not again, no matter how many times Steve insisted it wasn’t his fault.

(It was.)

The last time Bruce saw Natasha, she gave them a smile and said, “See you in a minute.” And then she went 2014 and he went to 2012 to save the future. And they did, he told himself later, she did. It comforted him that it’s what she would have wanted to go out doing. Nat saved the future and saved trillions of lives.

(Even at the cost of her own.)

**Thor**

  
The first time Thor met Natasha Romanoff, she was flying the plane that he nearly grounded by kidnapping his brother. The second time they met, they were aboard the helicarrier, discussing Loki. “He is of Asgard, and he is my brother,” Thor explained. “He killed eighty people in two days,” She said. She had made a good point. “He’s adopted.”

(Soon, Natasha would adopt the team, or the team would adopt her. Either way, they became a makeshift family in addition to the one he had on Asgard. He never knew how lucky he was.)

Thor didn’t know Natasha very well, but he was emboldened by her death. Clint told them how she threw herself off the cliff to save him, to save them all. The way she battled every day to save the world, even when there was no hope for five years. Natasha reminded him of Valkyrie, or perhaps Sif, the way she fought and held her own against warriors armed with magic hammers and inner demons in the form of giant green rage monsters.

(The way she’d fought like the devil and died like an angel.)

“Why are we acting like she’s gone?” He had seethed, thinking of how they could bring her back, because they had the stones. Anything was possible, because they had the stones.

(In truth, he felt it was his fault. He should have been the one to make the sacrifice.)

There was lightning in his veins, he wanted to yell. He wanted to bring everyone back, because he had seen his brother die and he couldn't bring him back, because those people were on that spaceship because of him, and now they had the chance to bring them back.

(Because he was still worthy.)

In the end, it wasn’t just Thor who was worthy to wield Mjolnir, but Steve as well. It didn’t escape Thor that there was only one hero gone from the battle. The way some of the others looked around, as if expecting her to be there, only to see the evidence on Clint’s face. There were crestfallen expressions, and furious tears, and vows to make it worth it, because of Natasha.

(Because she would have been worthy too.)

**Clint** **Barton**

  
When Clint Barton first met Natasha Romanoff, she was the Black Widow, the rogue assassin from the KGB, finest in her class, trained for espionage and intelligence warfare. Trained nearly from birth to cheat, to lie, to steal, to kill. Trained in a world of shadows and poisoned wine and cloaks and daggers.

(He wouldn’t know until later that it was also a world of pain and death in the form of perfection and ballet, of hesitation and consequences. He wouldn’t know until later that it was never the poisoned wine that kept her up at night, and that haunted her when she finally managed to fall asleep.)

And he had mercy, he rescued her, because he was Hawkeye, the SHIELD agent from the circus, the boy with the bow and arrow, who knew that she was only who she had been made to be. He saw something in her, and knew she was just a kid, like he was. Just a kid who was broken - because she didn’t know it, but she was broken.

(Clint got the feeling that if he had seen what she had seen, if he had done what she had done, he wouldn’t be broken. He would be shattered, torn into pieces that were too small to put back together.)

It took them a while, but they became a team. STRIKE Team Delta, Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff, who nobody ever thought would actually make it, but they did. They kept mostly to themselves, but gained friends among the top brass - Maria Hill, Phil Coulson, Melinda May, and even, though Clint was sure he would never admit it, Nick Fury. They had a dozen or so acquaintances, Victoria Hand among them, most of whom turned out to be HYDRA.

(Or dead, as Clint remembered from the funerals he and Natasha had attended.)

When they were called into the Avengers Initiative, they didn’t know what they were getting into. Clint didn’t even get called in - his mind was controlled by Loki, and Nat ended up having to knock him out to bring him back. Natasha had gone in for the Avengers Initiative, and Clint knew that it was to save him.

(Because that was the one thing she would never stop doing.)

When SHIELD fell, a part of Clint and Nat did too. The thing that brought them together lay in ruins at their feet, ablaze with the fires of hundreds of people that were HYDRA, and the embers of hundreds more that were dead because of HYDRA agents. Clint stood with Nat by his side at the graves of people who were either SHIELD agents who died bravely, fighting for what they believed in, or HYDRA agents who were hidden in plain sight, fulfilling their mission even in death. Natasha laid flowers on every grave she could, knowing some were HYDRA and some were SHIELD, and that she would never know which.

(“The truth is a matter of circumstance.”)

When Clint found Nat, caught in the web of her past by Wanda, he tried to help her untangle it. He took her home, because Laura and Lila and Cooper were home for the both of them, and the team with her, because it was the only thing he could think to do.

(Her angels danced with her demons, Clint knew, occasionally mixing the moral gray area she lived in with the red from her ledger. She wasn’t good or bad, just trying to survive - and redeem herself so she would deserve to.)

When the Accords came into play, Clint and Natasha had a long talk about what they would do. It wasn’t an argument - they never argued - but they weighed the pros and cons. Clint decided to retire. Natasha decided to sign, to try to keep the Avengers together. Neither was satisfied with the other’s decision, but they understood it.

(Just like they both understood that they were both pulling their punches when they fought at the airport in Berlin.)

Clint knew Nat got out after stopping T’Challa from getting Steve and Bucky. He didn’t ask why she did; he already knew why. She told him she had unfinished business. He knew what that meant. He warned her to be careful. Then she disappeared, off to save her sisters in Russia.

(He didn’t offer to go with her because he knew that she was the only one who could face her demons.)

They didn’t see each other for a long time. Thanos snapped, and he knew she just have visited the farmhouse, looking for him and Lila and Cooper and Laura and Nate, only to find it empty. For five years, he became a vigilante, because his wife and his kids were dead and those who were alive were wasting their lives. And it made him _angry_.

(He knew she knew he was alive. He didn’t care.)

Then in Tokyo, she stood in the rain, familiar red hair braided back the same way Lila used to do it whenever Nat came over and her hair was long enough. She saw him with the bodies beneath his feet, soaked in the blood he had spilled. Nat saw him as he had seen her all those years ago. She gave him hope, even though he begged her not to.

(She held the hand that had wielded the weapon that had killed _so_ _many_ _people_.)

Clint volunteered to go for the test run. He didn’t know why. Maybe it was because he didn’t trust Scott to do it. Maybe it was because he thought if he died, at least they would solve the problem and save his family.

(Maybe it was because if it worked, he’d get to see them again.)

When Clint got back from the test run, he stared down at the baseball glove. That baseball glove from the farmhouse in the past. Nat ran to him, and he gave her the glove. She understood exactly, even before he told them that it worked, it worked, it worked.

(She understood that they were so far from Budapest.)

And then she was on the cliff with the purple sky and the slightly blood-tinged sun, and he knew she was going to die. Because there they were, Clint and Nat, hand-in-hand like they were children, only children aren’t trying to kill themselves so the other won’t have to. “Let me go,” Natasha told him, eyes filled with tears. They weren’t tears of sadness, they were tears for him. Because he was going to go home and snap his own fingers and bring his family back. And he was going to be happy. And she was going to be dead, blood splattered, bones broken, at the bottom of a cliff on Vormir.

(People are not rain or snow or autumn leaves. They do not look beautiful when they fall.)

Because she did fall. She seemed to fall a for a thousand years, and when she hit the bottom, it had only taken an instant, and Clint’s best friend was dead. He woke up in the water, with an orange stone in one hand and her blood on the other, and he didn’t know if it had been worth it. 

(When Laura called after Bruce snapped, he knew it was.) 

When Clint went home, and he hugged Lila, Lila with her effervescent smile and her big brown eyes, and Cooper, whose baseball glove had given him hope again, and Nate, named after his best friend, his partner. He kissed Laura for the first time in five years. 

(He knew she was there, too, if only in spirit.) 

Clint realized, as he talked to Wanda, that Natasha had redeemed herself like she always felt she’d needed to. She’d saved half of the universe, saved him. She’d died so that she could be deserving of life. 

(If love was for children, then perhaps they were all children, playing a game that no one seemed to win.)

**Author's Note:**

> I hope everyone’s staying safe during this time. Please leave kudos if you feel this merits them, and comments because they give me life. Have a great Spring Break everyone!
> 
> Cheers!


End file.
